Google turns 25: 9 fun facts about the search giant

Google was initially named Backrub by the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The name was a reference to the system's ability to analyse ‘backlinks’ on the web.

Google was born out of a garage in Menlo Park, California, much like other tech giants like Apple and Hewlett-Packard. Google subsequently bought the garage and filled it with sweets, snacks, and lava lamps, making it an iconic part of Google's history.

The name Google is a misspelling of the mathematical term googol.

Google's email service, Gmail, came out on April Fool's Day, 2004. The announcement was written in such a way that many people assumed it was a joke at first.

Google is famous for its creative April Fools' Day pranks, such as "Google Nose," a fictitious service that claimed to allow users to search and smell scents on the internet, or "Google Maps Pac-Man," which turned real streets into Pac-Man games.

The unique ethos of Google extends to its headquarters, where employees ride coloured "gBikes" around the Googleplex.

The historic acquisition of YouTube by Google took place not in a corporate office but at a Denny's restaurant in Palo Alto, California, over mozzarella sticks and handshakes.

In an effort to mow the lawns at Google headquarters more sustainably, they once hired a herd of goats to graze the fields.

Google is so deeply embedded in our daily lives that the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster both formally certified "google" as a verb in 2006. "Googling" is now the default word for searching the web.